Antigone. Sophocles. Friedrich Hölderlin (Translator). Frankfurt am Main. 1804.
Funding provided by National Endowment for the Humanities.
German (F. Hölderlin, 1804) (OCR draft) (German) (German (F. Hölderlin, 1804))
Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.
mvp-comment-574-1
Cleopatra is the third example. Her father was the wind-god, Boreas: her mother, the Athenian Oreithyia, whom he carried off to his wild home in Thrace. Cleopatra married Phineus, king of the Thracian Salmydessus, on the W. coast of the Euxine, not far from the entrance to the Bosporus. She bore him two sons. He afterwards put her away, and imprisoned her. Her imprisonment is not directly mentioned here: but cp.
Diod. 4. 44
, who says of Heracles, when serving with the Argonauts,
τὴν Κλεοπάτραν ἐκ τῆς φυλακῆς προαγαγεῖν. Phineus then married Eidothea, sister of Cadmus. Eidothea put out the eyes of Cleopatra's two sons, and caused them also to be imprisoned.
mvp-comment-574-2 It is the fate of Cleopatra herself which Soph. means to compare with Antigone's: this is plain from 986. The fate of the sons is made so prominent only because nothing else could give us so strong a sense of the savage hatred which pursued the mother.
mvp-comment-574-3 Soph. supposes the outline of the story to be familiar. Cleopatra has already been divorced and imprisoned. The poet chooses the moment at which Cleopatra's sons are being blinded by Eidothea, with the sharp shuttle in her blood-stained hands. Ares, the god of cruel bloodshed, beholds with joy a deed so worthy of his Thracian realm.
mvp-comment-574-4
The name of Cleopatra (like that of Capaneus, 133) is not mentioned. Two strophes are given to this theme, partly, perh., as having an Attic interest (982). Soph. wrote two plays called
Φινεύς. We know only that Cleopatra's sons were there called
Ὄαρθος (?
Παρθένιος H. Weil) and
Κράμβος: and that the subsequent blindness of Phineus was represented as a punishment of his cruelty (schol. Apoll. Rhod. 2. 178). Eidothea was mentioned by Soph. in his
Τυμπανισταί (schol. on 980),—a play which perh. concerned the Dionysiac worship, since the
τύμπανον (kettle-drum) was used in his
ὄργια as well as in those of Cybelè. Another version called her Idaea, daughter of Dardanus.
mvp-comment-574-5 παρὰ δὲ Κυανεᾶν πελάγει δ. ἁλός 1 πετρῶν 2
mvp-comment-574-6
of
πελαγέων into
σπιλάδων is also erroneous.
mvp-comment-574-7 L's accent, πελάγεων 3 πελάγει 4 παρά 5 πελάγει 6 Κυανεᾶν 7
mvp-comment-575-1 ἀκταὶ Βοσπόριαι 8 Θρῃκῶν 9 ἄξενος 10 κλῄζεται 11 ἠδ’ 12
944-987. mvp-comment-537-1 The chorus, in the manner of Pindar, moralise on the fate of Antigone through examples drawn from the circle of mythology and legend; and thus suggest the same cold comfort as in their mention of Niobe. The effect of this ode is to repress the excitement and solemnize the thoughts of the spectator. 'Danaë, though of royal lineage, and entrusted with the golden shower, was bound by all-constraining destiny in her brazen cell. 'Bound, too, in a prison of rock, was Lycurgus, who provoked the God. He knew his madness when it was too late. And on the Thracian promontory Phineus sons, blinded by their father's wife (Idothea), bewailed their rejected mother Cleopatra's hapless lot, who, descended from an ancient line, and endowed with swiftness by her divine sire, was notwithstanding overtaken by the long-lived fates.' Danae and Cleopatra were, like Antigone, of royal birth, and, like Antigone, were bound in a living tomb. So also was the son of Dryas, himself a king: and this, in his case, was the penalty of an impetuous and defiant spirit. Sophocles seems to have followed one version of the obscure and variable legend of Phineus, according to which Cleopatra did not die, but was rejected by Phineus for Idothea, and imprisoned in a cave, from which she was afterwards released by Heracles. The sons were blinded by their step-mother. The first strophe and antistrophe are choriambic with an iambic close; the second, logaoedic. The choriambi here were probably chanted slowly, so as to have a weighty, solemn effect. The scheme is as follows: a'. First strophe and antistrophe. IILUCI LUCILー LUCILIITUCICートに IICClluclトー IIICCILUCIトに ICICICI KLCICICI CトートUICIK β'. Second strophe and antistrophe. UCCTCCICCI IICCICCII!یں ILU TUCI くいくいトCICIK Cトートしーーー ―トビトCICIK CÚCCICICICC
966-968. mvp-comment-555-1 And hard by Cyanean rocks that divide the seas, are the cliffs of the Bosphorus and the Thracian promontory of Salmydessus, where,' etc. The genitive gives indefiniteness to the notion of place, and παρά implies neighbouring extent.
966. mvp-comment-556-1 πελαγέων, see v. rr., although metrically allowable (πελᾶγεων), is condemned by the vagueness of the meaning and the tautology in πελαγέων .. ἁλός. The ingenious conjecture of Wieseler is therefore adopted. It is confirmed by the gloss πετρῶν. The 1st syllable of Ἄρης is long in arsi supr. 139.
969. mvp-comment-557-1 The lost cretic has been differently supplied: ἄξevos Boeckh, ήτων Meineke. A verb is more wanted, e. g.
969. mvp-comment-557-2 ἵσταται, κλήζεται.